"Idea validation" is a stupid name

Hey, I'm Tom. I wrote a post called "From idea to validation in 24 hours" a couple weeks ago here on IH.

And it got a bit of attention, I'm glad some of you found it useful!

But that was actually a stupid title for a post. I realized that when talking with some other IHers in the comments. Some people said that not validating an idea doesn't mean you should throw the idea away. And I agree.

I think we should all stop using this "idea validation" term.

Because actually you're validating / invalidating anything but the idea itself.

What I mean by that is there's very few really bad ideas (super illegal stuff aside).

Most business ideas, with the right context and founders, have a real shot at turning into successful companies.

What you do validate / invalidate when you go through the so-called "idea validation" process:

• The quality of your offering
• Your target audience
• Your acquisition channels
• Founder-product fit
• The overall execution of the product and/or marketing strategy
• And lots more

Sure, to some extent those are items of the idea. But whenever an idea isn't validated, most of us will toss it aside, say it was a "bad idea", and move on to the next one.

If I'm being honest, this is totally what I do. And I'll keep doing it, because I have too many ideas (got lots of flaws as well, don't worry). So I can't afford to put each idea in a 3-month iteration loop. But maybe some people don't have ideas so often but end up tossing them away because they were told they had to go through "idea validation".

So to those IHers, I wanna say that not having validating your idea doesn't mean it's bad. It means something, somewhere, needs to change in the approach. It's OK to try again, and keep trying, as long as you're moving forward.

And I'd like to submit "execution validation" as a replacement term 🤣

Unless you have a better suggestion?